Patiently, brilliantly, Steve James looks closely at our society. He begins documentaries with no easy end in sight, and persists. How could he have guessed his masterpiece "Hoop Dreams" (1994) would develop into a story of such incredible power? Now, in "The Interrupters," he has made his most important film, telling the story of ex-convicts who go daily into the streets of Chicago to try to talk gang members out of shooting at one another.

The film is a collaboration between Hoop Dreams director Steve James and journalist Alex Kotlowitz, who profiled their organization in 2008 for The New York Times Magazine. The topic of violence in Chicago hit particularly close to home for both men, James tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

"Alex saw three people in the course of writing [his book There Are No Children Here] perish on the streets," he says. "And for me, two people [related to the cast] from Hoop Dreams ... were murdered. ... What we wanted to do, in some ways, was to refocus some attention on this issue because it feels like we've gotten to a point where murders are down, but they're still way too high. And I think there's this feeling that we've kind of done what we can do — and it's just the way those neighborhoods are at this point."

Clarence Page @ ChicagoTribune.com uses Ameena Matthews, one of the film’s subjects, as a hook to discuss the film:

If you haven't seen the film yet, I recommend it as a rare, courageously close-up look at the people and situations behind some of today's most tragic headlines. The documentary captures a year in the lives of Matthews and two other interrupters, Cobe Williams and Eddie Bocanegra, who have served enough time in prison and on the streets to have credibility with the young hard-core offenders they're trying to reach.

Local angles

New Orleans chefJohn Besh appeared on Monday’s (Feb. 13) “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” and cooked, in the words of the host, “a giant pot of stuff.”

It was crawfish. Besh also gave away, via king cake baby lottery, a Mardi Gras trip to an audience member.

The Mardi Gras-themed segment is here in two parts. Typing continues below the boxes.

A sidebar story explores the “shipper” phenomenon of fans obsessing over relationships between characters on shows:

The Vampire Diaries is just the latest in a long line of shows attracting a large shipper fan base. So who are these fans called shippers, and why do they do what they do? In this week’s issue, Jeff “Doc” Jensen explores these questions and offers a detailed history of the shipper phenomenon, from Star Trek and X-Files to today’s hit shows from Bones, Fringe, Castle, and Once Upon a Time – and explains how showrunners do and don’t factor in shipper input while plotting their characters’ fates.

Ms. Harris-Perry will be the only tenured professor in the United States — and one of a very small number of African-American women — who serves as a cable news host.

Is this a sign of the rise of the academic on TV? Though cable news is still stereotyped by some as a 24-7 screaming match, there are now pockets of intellectual stimulation that did not exist a decade ago.